Idling

This man is leaning against the bus stop wondering whether or not to
get on. He's having a real crack at idling.

When he was seventeen, sitting on a stool in a dark and pokey bar, a
bloated fellow with a face like the cross section of a red cabbage
fixed him straight in the eye and told him that whatever his plans for
life were, forget it, he was going to be a waster. Take it from me. And
I should know.

He kind of took it on as career advice. He generally felt out of kilter
with the prevailing ethos of the time and when his father bought him a
Filofax for his birthday, with a tinge of embarrassment because Colin
off of Eastenders had one too, he decided that maybe he should attend
to the cabbage's words.

His father was a go getter, full of bloody beans and from a very early
age as he was tucked into bed by his mother he would look up and see
him standing stoutly in the doorway with the hall light shining behind
his head, reciting lines of inspirational poetry at him:

" If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Bollocks to that.

And then one day, pub bound again, he overheard a woman complaining
that she had a Flaneur for a husband. A bloody hopeless, good for
nothing Flaneur. It sounded so languid, so exotic that he knew whatever
it was he was going to be one. He wanted to pop over to Number 52
Festive Road, call on Mr Benn, go and see the shopkeeper and put on the
Flaneur costume so that he could walk out of the changing room into a
world of Flaneurism, populated by other Flaneurs getting up to
Flaneurish things.

Flaneur. French. Noun. An idler or loafer. 19th Century: see
Flanerie.
Flanerie. French. Noun. Aimless strolling or lounging, idleness. 19th
Century: from flaner to stroll, dawdle, ultimately from old Norse flana
to wander about.

Odin have you seen Balder today for we are heading towards Ragnarok,
the final conflict between Gods and giants when all elements, forces of
nature, and evil rise in battle to destroy men, Gods and all
life.

Sorry he's gone for a flana.

He would wander aimlessly. He would make a stand against
purposefulness, about being single minded.

And so he began on his Dawdlers Crusade. He stood in the front of
queues at MacDonalds and took ages to make up his mind, an hour or two,
before apologising and saying that he couldn't really see anything he
wanted. He infiltrated focus groups and made them go all blurry round
the ages creating products and policies that were ergonomically
hilarious.

As time went on he realised that he was truly becoming a great Flaneur,
strolling amidst a landscape of purpose, a ballet of intent,
pedestrians striding across the space in a straight line, heading
somewhere. A man who inadvertently wanders onto the stage, the Director
holding his head in his hands as this unkilted straggler taps Macduff
on the shoulder and asks why all these hearty blokes are marching
around looking so hot and bothered.

And so after trundling around the city for some years now he has moved
his activity on.

When I grow up I want to be a bus driver. That's the first thing he can
clearly remember his best friend telling him. Then it was a train
driver, then a pilot and then an astronaut. He hadn't seen him for nine
years. Since his second wife had left him and he'd settled down into
rehab.

And he recalls the time when he was on a bus and the driver didn't know
where to go. He didn't know the direction and everybody had to join in,
to guide him towards his destination. And suddenly everybody had
control of the thing - it was like a big remote controlled toy - Son
I.ve got something for your birthday but you'll need to come outside to
see it. Thanks Dad its massive. That's alright son but just make sure
you don't pick up any strangers, and stay in the bus lane d'you
hear.

And they all started smiling at each other and at that moment they
could have decided to take the bus off on some totally different
direction altogether, to drive across the deserts of Rajasthan, through
the lush vegetation of Borneo, that's it driver, next left, nearly
there.

But they didn't.

He wishes now that he had become a bus driver. A bus driver with
Flaneurist intent. He'd take people anywhere other than where they were
planning to go. Drive into the middle of a field and instruct everybody
that they were all going to have a picnic and a game of rounders. All
those on the left side of the bus bat first. He'd make people get off
at random points - but this isn't my stop - Oh yes it is sunshine now I
want you to get off my bus and walk into that house there and I'll come
and pick you up at the same time tomorrow. Just to a few people - say
two bus loads. Call it social engineering.

What's she doing here? Well the bus driver told her to come for the
night but she likes it so much she's staying.

He hates the way they call it getting from A to B. That's it. No room
inbetween. No letter that you can trip up on, on the way, find yourself
stumbling round there for an hour, a day, a week or to instead. First
rule when he's President of the Global Flaneurist Government - create a
new letter of the alphabet to go between these letters. Shaped a bit
like an O, only not so round; a bit ropy really; like it's been written
by somebody who's recovering from a stroke.

And so this is what he does these days. He drifts around until he finds
himself up against a bus stop. Should he get on or not? It will take
him somewhere, somewhere in the space of the city. He doesn't bother to
look at the number or the destination, that would imply a route - a
line that leads from one point to another. And once that happens then
time gets in the way; it becomes a hindrance, an inconvenience that has
to be overcome with continually increasing speed.

And the intervening points are lost.

He wonders if there will be another Flaneur on the bus. If full please
give up this seat to loafers. Maybe he will meet the Flaneur of his
dreams and they will sit there hand in hand looking out of the window
seeing a totally different landscape to everybody else pass them by,
full of tiny and beautiful moments.

You ask people if they know a particular road and they'll tell you
they've never heard of it. And they walk past it every day of their
lives.

Oh well, he's missed the bus.